Spring Awakening 2019
by sanctum-c
Summary: Prompts for Spring Awakening on Tumblr.
1. Getting Older

Tifa could not help the groan when her alarm sounded. And waking up so early was her idea. Joints took some effort to get moving and not feel so stiff. Deep fog in her brain; some coffee would help. She stretched with care and slipped out of bed, padding to the bathroom in her slippers. The sky outside was blue, the sun peeking over the horizon. Perfect timing.

Daily routines played out like so many times before. Washing, brushing her teeth. Down to the kitchen, one hand sliding along the banister rail with each step down. A pause at the bottom, frustration at the effects of time on her. A deep breath. Better. She felt better. Not so old anyway. "I feel fine."

A few little errands to complete in the kitchen first. Thermos filled with coffee – and another pause to sip at an immediate caffeine boost to ward off the woolly feel in her brain. Sandwich filling, butter, bread; sandwiches formed with practised ease. Selection of fruit, a few other not so healthy but tasty extras and her picnic basket was complete. She put her art supplies on top and wrapped her scarf around her neck. With her easel and canvas under one arm she set out.

People moving in the streets. Trucks with deliveries and idling motors, messengers and workers hurrying along the streets. A far cry from the bustle of midday, but still so many. She smiled and waved to those she recognised, heading out onto the main streets. Traffic grew heavier, the roar of cars and lorries, the more distant swish of higher velocity vehicles on the distant freeway.

Nothing but a few wisps of white clouds high in the sky, the sun tinting everything yellow. Behind her now and no longer catching her gaze. Tifa walked on, following the main road out towards the edge of the city. Fewer people out this far. Peaceful. Paved footpaths gave way to grasslands, fresher, greener growths long since overwhelming and hiding the desiccated plants once found here.

The landscape around her brightened still further. A pause at the base of a small hill. Once she would have run up the slope without another thought. Once she would have strolled up it. Now she needed to pause. Inevitable perhaps, but still frustrating. Muscles in her legs and ankles took time to begin protesting; still a surprise at the point she believed this little expedition would be easy. No such luck.

Tifa panted when she crested the hill, heart racing and a faint tracery of sweat on her forehead. The air remained cool, but now she was too hot. The scarf discarded, she set up the easel and her canvas, looking back towards the sun. Towards what remained of Midgar.

In intervening years, the city had collapsed further, long overdue maintenance pulling down vast sections of the once suspended upper plates. Perilous to consider venturing within the city limits for any reason. Difficult to stop anyone trying given the sheer length of the circumference. Not somewhere she wanted to go back.

Or not yet. Perhaps one day. There were still places within the city with relevance and an appeal.

For today she was content to stare and sketch, rendering the ever-greening Midgar onto her canvas. The growths now wrapping the plate supports climbed to vast heights over the central spire of the Shinra building, the immense flower beds clustered wherever the sun touched perhaps should not have been a surprise, though many still expressed amazement when the city where nothing grew became the epicentre for the new burst of life from within the Planet. There was no confirmation, but Tifa was sure there were two likely sources for the plant-life. A thought always capable of making her smile.

Tifa took her time, sketching what remained of the Sister Ray, the fallen barrel connected to the body via massed lengths of creeper. Tendrils of greenery, threaded with flowers spilled out over the plate edges and hanging down, shading the lower regions of Midgar where reports indicated a carpet of smaller plants had taken root. The sun rose, the changes in light picking out more detail, more colour within the city.

She sipped at her coffee until the distant roar of a motorbike sounded. Another smile. Not here merely for the view or to paint. He was arriving home today after too long. Tifa completed her brush-strokes and unfolded the blanket. The bike halted beside her by the time she finished laying out the contents of the basket. Cloud Strife – forever twenty-one – smile at her and settled onto the blanket beside her.


	2. A Brief Audience with Tifa Lockhart

Tifa Lockhart, piano prodigy, returned home this week to the sleepy town of Nibelheim. Many still express surprise that a concert pianist of her level could originate from such a remote locale and with a strange lack of professional tutelage. When I put this to Lockhart all she can do is shrug and laugh at those who still insist there must be some subterfuge or that Lockhart herself is a distraction from the true talent.

To emphasise the point she invites me upstairs to her childhood bedroom, asks me to look over the battered piano. I try to denounce the comment, assuring her that I have no doubts about her talent, but she insists. The piano – to my admittedly untrained eye – contains nothing underhanded. Each key operates as one would expect; Lockhart even lifts the lid so I can witness the direct action of each hammer. There are no electronic switches, no automated music feed. The piano is normal and unremarkable.

Without a hint of hesitation Lockhart plays 'Country Boy' without the slightest mistake, imbuing the song with the warmth and cheer found in the upbeat side of her catalogue. I sit quietly, enthralled as Lockhart strikes the keys, her eyes closed and smiling as she plays.

Lockhart is famously single, though many have tried to claim dalliances with her in her childhood. Lockhart has denied every one of these, but many have asked the same question I do: who – if anyone – is the boy of the title? It seems there might be someone in this world that she cares for to a degree to compose the track, but Lockhart demurs and interrupts to call for coffee.

Cloud Strife, Lockhart's life-long assistant and friend, intrudes with coffee some minutes later. I later tried to engage him later in conversation, but Strife is a man of few words, content to fade into the background of events and never one to seek the limelight. The 'Country Boy' of the track? It hardly seems plausible to connect the two. Certainly one could make the deductive leap given their longevity of time together, but surely something would have slipped by now. There are no lingering glances or personal smiles in their interactions; if Strife is indeed the object of Lockhart's affections, both of them are enacting a world-class performance to keep this truth hidden.

I ask about the curious nature of her compositions. Her warm, upbeat tracks (the afore-mentioned 'Country Boy', 'Valley of the Fallen Star', 'Costal Resort' for example) were all composed on the road during her various tours. The darker, more sinister tracks that brought her to the public's attention ('Those Chosen by the Planet', 'Corporate' and her one choral work, 'One-Winged Angel' amongst them) were composed in Nibelheim on the very piano Lockhart is sat at.

Lockhart is unable to articulate why her compositions vary to such extremes. The best she can offer is who can truly say where ideas come from? A philosophical answer. She's right of course, who would ask any playwright or author if their location influenced what they wrote? Though few examples express such a clear delineation.

My time with Lockhart is almost up, but I would be remiss if I did not ask if I could hear anything of her new compositions. With astonishing generosity, Lockhart agrees to let me hear a song from her next album; 'Calamity from the Skies'. And now my previous question about the locale the songs were composed in falls flat. The song is a soaring, championing song, promising glory and life and wonder.

* * *

I wrote the above words following my interview with Lockhart and well in advance of her latest album's release. For various reasons the publication of my column was delayed until after the album's release, giving me the opportunity to listen to the refined and finished version of 'Calamity from the Skies'. The song troubles me in a way that is hard to admit.

You likely have heard the track; the swirling piano piece, fast tempo and hinting at a prolonged conflict. It seems absurd to insist that my reaction to the song is so different now to when I heard it in Nibelheim. So changed was my experience that I reached out to Lockhart for answers. How had the song changed? Why had the tone and feel of the track become so much darker, hinting at battle, at strife, at the unknown and unknowable? I was unable to discuss this directly with Lockhart, but Strife passed on my questions and later provided an answer.

I remain unsure how to interpret this answer. Strife quotes Lockhart as saying that the track is little changed from the performance I heard. Certainly there have been no changes in tone or themes in the music. The track continues to trouble me, and does, perhaps, say far more about my own reactions to Lockhart's work than any strangeness in the composition. Few would dwell on the track – as good as it is alongside the rest of the album – but personally it raises some odd questions.

_Tifa Lockhart's latest album, 'Reunion', is now available._


	3. Pre-Empting the Next Crisis

The dust had long settled in the Shinra building. Realistically no should even contemplate entering the place. If the blast from Diamond Weapon had not cracked its foundations, the pull of Meteor's final moments should have sealed the building's fate. But it stood, still towering over the remains of Midgar. The structure did not shake when Tifa crossed the threshold of the lobby, nor when Cloud followed, tensed and ready. Some desperate types might still cling to the building for shelter, people who did not heed Reeve's call to flee the city on the verge of the end of the World.

But though they could be sure of no human peril, monsters remained a concern. One of the city's worst kept secrets; for all the safety and sanctuary towns and cities allegedly provided, Midgar itself crawled with strange forms in the darker regions. And with no humans to keep them at bay, it was far too plausible they had spread here too. At least a Hell House would be obvious if encountered. Unless the things were more capable of mimicry than generally considered. Could it take the form of a partitioned office? A bathroom? A supply closet? The building itself?

Tifa glanced around with a shiver. The broken front of the building was so far away now, a few remaining shards of plate glass stabbing down like teeth. If it came down she would not be able to escape in time as the whole upper floor came crashing down towards them. What would be worse? The ceiling descending thanks to structural damage or resulting from the hunger of a strange Midgar denizen.

"Tifa?" A touch on her arm. "Are you okay?" Cloud sounded worried.

"Fine," she said, forcing a smile. "Just…" Another glance towards the entrance. No movement, no change to the ceilings. "Never expected to come back here."

Cloud nodded. "Me either."

A first step on a new venture likely to require them both to travel the world. They were safe – so far as they knew – from Jenova's machinations. But discussions between them had caught a possible oversight in their assumptions. Was all of Jenova accounted for? The decapitated corpse from Shinra's lab fought and destroyed at various stages of their previous journey. The cells integrated inside Cloud remained but inert. Whatever Sephiroth had done with the head remained a question mark.

But what of Hojo? His experiments with her stretched across decades and his facilities remained scattered across the world. Did any samples of Jenova remain somewhere another might find them, might repeat or extend Hojo's work? Too great a risk for everyone. Thus the clean-up. The process would in all likelihood eventually take them back to Nibelheim and the sealed interior of the Mako reactor. Who knew what traces existed in amongst the pipes and capsules installed there? At the same time it was no time for panic. Avalanche had fought for the world and won. No need to take that peace away unnecessarily.

A quiet investigation of the Shinra building would be enough for now.

The lifts were long since out of operation; no way out of climbing. But they short-cut a few flights of the emergency stairs and used the lobby to ascend up part way. There a reinforced door lasted scant seconds under a few blows from the Buster sword. A repeat of before, the long slog of stair climbing. No Aeris or Nanaki awaiting them at the top. Nor President Shinra, Turks, Rufus or Hojo.

Less pressing of a journey this time too. They could stop more regularly, sitting side-by-side on the bottom step of the next flight, quiet murmured conversations in the deathly stillness, sharing their water bottle between them. Even a few snacks to keep their energy up. Despite the precautions, Tifa's muscles burned when the stairs terminated at last and they ventured into the interior.

More water stains here, scattered papers, what might have been blood. The building left more or less the same since those fateful days, none bothering to care to return – and few willing to make the same long climb Cloud and Tifa managed. The floors remained the same, faint familiarity from before not matching memory; more shadows, more time, different focuses. Despite the rapidity of Shinra's fall, some forward planning occurred; emergency generators stood throughout the floor. Someone had intended to keep on going no matter what firing the Sister Ray did to the reactors.

Hojo's lab still boasted the strong antiseptic smell as before. Jenova's container was gone, the damaged section of floor covered with a metal plate bolted over the top. It took some time to find anything suspicious. More doors and cabinets to force, squinting at discoloured labels and strange substances in containers. Could they trust anything? Did any one of these contain a hidden sample of her? Too risky.

"We should probably burn it all." The words stung, and Cloud flinched. But he nodded still and there were precious other alternatives. Some might argue the wholesale destruction was abhorrent. But nothing resulting from Hojo's hands could ever be anything but abhorrent in itself. The methods and routes he took to achieve his goals would taint any result.

Everything piled in the centre of the lab. Vials of chemicals, written notes and manuals, long-dead animal samples - neglected and forgotten as the empire fell. All piled high. They backed away, Cloud clutching a single fire Materia in one hand- and waited. Tifa shivered. Always more his trauma than her own; her personal hell occurring far from the town and awaited her in the future.

With a gentle touch she pried the Materia from his hand and shushed his protests. "You can wait outside. If you like." He started to protest but nodded instead, his posture relaxing, his need to seem strong no matter what still not quite dissolved and Cloud's honest reactions still lagging.

"Be careful." He hurried from the lab.

No sense delaying this; Tifa focused, the fire spell on the tip of her tongue. A surge of flame erupted from her hands with the invocation, the mass of chemicals and paper catching fire. Enough; risky to stay any longer. Tifa dived for the door. Cloud glanced back at her, eyes widening for before he averted them from the flaming mass. They needed to get out of here.

Tifa took Cloud's hand and together they ran for the stairs. Unlikely the whole building would burn, but Hojo's dark science would be gone. A first step, but a vital one.


	4. Shinra Surveillance Video Library

Reno hit pause, groaned and fidgeted on the hospital bed. Amongst the Turk's many supposed specialities, information and surveillance remained high on the list. Which was laughable given the infamous nature of the Turks at the best of times and their official listing as part of HR. But Tseng was something of dictator within the outfit. Reno may be too injured for field operations – something he dearly hoped would end soon – but not too incapacitated he could not watch video.

Hours and hours of multiple view-point cameras; boxes and boxes of tapes from the Shinra company's security system, all to answer the question: who truly killed President Shinra? Palmer clung to his story without hesitation or alteration. Sephiroth – a man five years dead by all reckonings – killed hundreds and impaled the head of the company to his desk. A hasty check of the footage in the aftermath confirmed part of Palmer's story. Or at least; the grainy black and white VHS footage showed a figure of what appeared to be someone with Sephiroth's hair colour, build and presence striding into the President's office.

But the visuals of Sephiroth – or someone assuming his look – lead neatly to an entirely different issue. How had he made it into the building? Not via the front-entrance; those tapes revealed nothing once the panic subsided. Not up the back-stairs either – Avalanche's route inside. That had at least been an amusing note; to see Strife, Lockhart and Wallace stumbling from the stairwell, utterly exhausted.

No sign of Sephiroth on the roof, though outside of Wutai risking everything, no one ventured a theory on who could have air-dropped an assassin onto the building. Nor had the killer scaled the exterior. And thus it fell to Reno to trawl through every security camera feed to trace Sephiroth's movements back to an origin point. Whether an unforeseen egress to the building or to – as many secretly hoped – a disgruntled employee with a penchant for the dramatic.

As yet; nothing. Reno had started with the upper cameras and worked down in reverse. Here was Avalanche racing through scenes as they traced the destructive trail. Another question there; how had they gotten out of their cells? The relevant tape was low priority all things considered; but-

Reno winced and struggled across the room to the box of tapes. Cells, cells- Here. Only a brief diversion from his searches. He'd be back onto his tedious investigation soon enough. His heart lurched early on; Sephiroth strode into the room, slew the guards with a single sword blow and paused right in front of the cell with Strife and Lockhart. The pair had dozed off the girl leaning against Strife's shoulder. Odd. Strife rose from the bench he sat slumped on and took halting, awkward steps to the door. He reached out- And crumpled to the floor.

Sephiroth opened the door. But, Strife was okay, right? Why had Sephiroth left him alive? The tape offered no answer. The assassin left the door and strode away, the contents of the cell seemingly of no more interest to him. Sephiroth working with Avalanche? Something didn't feel right; he had helped them escape but there was no sense of an allegiance there. Not least Strife seemed to loathe the man. No sound on the tapes annoyingly. Not like he was liable to find some mention from the prisoners of not worrying because Sephiroth would be there soon. It would have helped.

Reno wound the tape further back. Strife and Lockhart still slumped together on the bench. In a different time and a different context, the sight could almost be romantic. A tired couple dozing off together, not a care in the world and needing only each other. Reno snorted and rewound the tape. Nothing. The hunt for Sephiroth continued.


	5. The Only Way of Guaranteeing Sleep

Sleep took a long time to return to normal. There was a long and tangled time from the destruction of Meteor to the point where the world seemed capable of turning on its own again. When Tifa's life was not interrupted by a hundred things she needed to do, when there were not a thousand emergencies every-day. When she lived in a home again, one with a complete roof, with a working electrical system and taps producing clean, drinkable water whenever she turned them on.

But when each day was not spent clearing rubble, helping other survivors, rebuilding structures, toiling with no end in sight – she was still removed from the dim memory of relaxation and no worries. What did she like to do anymore? Did she have something like hobbies? Once she might have played the piano, but finding and playing something similar was not easy. Her martial arts training was undertaken more in terms of practical application than anything she wanted to do.

Her main interests at the point she left Nibelheim. After that life had never slowed enough. Establishing the Seventh Heaven, joining Avalanche, their campaign against Shinra, operating the Seventh Heaven. She could never begrudge her fallen comrades, but she had never been able to let go like them after a mission. And after the Seventh Heaven was gone, there was the pursuit of Sephiroth, the desperate attempts to keep the Planet safe. Oh, there were those moments at Costa del Sol where she could swim. But relax? Not something she seemed capable of any more.

Even her bowing out of Avalanche's operations to care for Cloud had not offered respite, the concerns and attempts to care for him eating up every scrap of her life. A full-circle back to the present. And here the point where she should be able to relax. Or at least sleep.

Tifa huffed and stared at the ceiling. Ridiculous. She had never had trouble sleeping before, no matter where she was and what was happening. There was no other choice. Snatched moments between running a bar and sneaking around Midgar at night. Camping out in monster-filled wilderness like some extreme-sports fanatic. Snatched moments of shut-eye in the moments before dawn after evading an opponent. At the end of a tiring day of caring for significant others, after working to restore something like the life now gone-

She never slept for long. Every blink helped; no span of sleep guaranteed. Perhaps the visit to Costa del Sol should have indicate the problem; she slept badly every night there, waking, with a racing pulse, listening for any indication of Shinra's presence. The same problem she now encountered. When exhaustion became too much she would doze off, but any sound was capable of wakening her; a distant buzz of conversation in the distance, a shift in the wind, a creak of floorboards-

She knew the recommendations and suggestions to help her problem but none seemed to work; waiting until she felt tired ensured she would go to bed at 1 am or later – and still wake up repeatedly. Avoiding caffeine and alcohol did nothing. Winding down in bed with a book seemed to work but all too quickly lost whatever soporific affect it once had. Getting up and doing something else was too much like her old life; she was awake and alert – with the crushing sense of missing out on sleep weighing her down.

The one doctor she had secured an appointment with after weeks of waiting assured her this would pass in time, but he was unable or too rushed off his feet to give her a time-scale or anything more concrete. She was on her own. Unless she got drunk every night- Tifa shuddered. No. No kind of solution. She sighed. Nothing else for it.

Tifa rolled onto her side and with an all too familiar pang of regret reached out for Cloud's arm. She shook him, gently hissing his name.

"Tifa?" Cloud's words came out as a mumble. "Are you okay?"

"Cold." She squirmed closer to him. Cloud rolled over to face her with a crunch of bed springs. He slipped one arm under her head and the other around her waist. She burrowed closer.

"Better?"

"Yeah." Tifa closed her eyes and lay her head against his chest. Cloud's breathing rapidly settled and he drifted off once more. This wasn't fair to him. To disturb him every-time she couldn't sleep. But it worked. Here, in his embrace, her eyes drooped, the warmth, the smell of Cloud around her what she needed. She'd go back to the doctor to ask for more help. But at least in the meantime she had this. Tifa shuffled closer still, rolling over to face away from Cloud and fell into a deep sleep.


	6. Defrosting

A Spring day off; time for most of the odd jobs to be done around the house. No customers to serve today, no intrusions by still energetic ninjas. It would have been tempting to blow the whole day off, but there were so many jobs both Cloud and Tifa had been putting off forever. Cloud went to fix some damage in the main bar; Tifa fetched the old towels, spreading them across the kitchen floor. All the food moved into the fridge, she hefted a fire materia and switched the freezer off. The frost-coated interior would not last long.


	7. Killing Tifa

Tifa switched off her light and rolled onto her side. She closed her eyes, mind still whirling. An impulse; it was not late yet. She rolled over. "Hey. Want to have sex?"

Cloud's eyes blinked open, the Mako glow bright in the dim bedroom. "Sure." They kissed, a familiar preamble to their shared moments of intimacy. Tifa slid her hands along Cloud's arms, one of his hands settled onto her waist. The kiss ended.

"Wonder what motivates her." The assassin, little more than a conjectured existence based on odd discrepancies in high profile murders; no pattern between the hits, no consistency in methods or location. Money must be part of it; to risk life wandering into highly secure locations, to do the bidding of the shadowy-secretive rich. Almost like Elena. No. Nothing like Elena. The Turks had a cultivated mystique but were rarely subtle or elegant. Their power came from the backing of their handlers, the visible weapon of a vast consortium.

No, the assassin was a different breed to them. Definitively a woman - if Tifa's own conjecture about who could get close was correct. Someone who would not be seen as a threat. A sense there; someone seemingly fragile or trust-worthy. Or perhaps merely an opportunist of astonishing adaptability and improvisation. And somehow Tifa could see her fingerprints over each case she had collated and investigated, an invisible mark left by a mystery. Oh, her fingerprints and other evidence would be all over the crime-scenes, but few might be prepared to try and tie them all together. And if they did? They were left with a complete picture of the assassin's targets – and be left secure in the knowledge that not only were they all perpetrated by the same individual, they had not the faintest idea who she was.

Tifa blinked. Cloud was watching her. "The assassin?"

"The assassin." She shifted onto her back. There was something there, some confluence, an after-image of the truth glimpsed from the blinding light of what she left of her victims. A sense of who was in the middle. And something almost familiar. How would one best gain access to a place? By posing as staff. The nurse; the one who commented on her hair. Right there and nowhere in the aftermath. Admittedly Tifa had not been looking at any of the dead bodies in much detail but- Something to try. "Goodnight." She rolled onto her side.

"Night."

Some confusion from Cloud. Her attention had drifted and- Sex. She asked if he wanted to have sex. She rolled back over. "Sorry. Do you want to have sex?" Even as she spoke, the yawn forced her lips apart and she stifled it with one hand.

Cloud patted her shoulder. "It's okay."

She smiled at him. "Okay." Another peck on the lips. "Night."

"Night." They settled back, but the hazy image of the assassin lingered as Tifa dozed off.


End file.
